


This Is It

by rosycheeked



Series: Second Message [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Trailer, Internal Monologue, M/M, POV Steve Rogers, Requited Unrequited Love, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, but he doesn't get one either
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 10:03:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17979278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosycheeked/pseuds/rosycheeked
Summary: If you’d told me, Tony, couldn’t we have avoided this? We could have loved and lost and saved the world together.If I’d told you, Tony, before the world crumbled around us, could we have been happy together? Do we deserve this pain if we could have saved the world by putting aside our own fears?This isn’t your fault, Tony. It’s ours. How the mighty have fallen.Or, Steve gets Tony's message.





	This Is It

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!
> 
> I know I said that I would keep writing Drarry fics after the previous one, but yuniesan so kindly asked me for this sequel...and I couldn't resist.
> 
> Just shows you the power of asking! If you comment with a good suggestion, chances are I'll write it.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!
> 
> E
> 
> *warnings in end notes*

Steve’s phone rings. Or, rather, it vibrates in his pocket. He pulls it out.

The screen says ‘Pepper Potts’. He supposes she has gotten his emails, his apologies, after all. He’s assumed from the silence on her end that they had been ignored, perhaps automatically deleted. He will answer anyway. Facing the problem is always the first step to making amends.

“Steve Rogers,” he intones as he answers the phone.

“Hello,” says the voice on the other end, and it’s Pepper all right, but he’s never heard her talk to him like this. Her voice sounds hard, forcefully cheery, and at the same time like she’s been crying for days.

“Are you all right, Pep-Miss Potts, I mean?” He doesn’t know if he can call her by her nickname anymore—it’s too familiar, and they haven’t spoken in so long (god, has it really been more than a year?).

There is a silence for a moment, as if she has hung up, but then she blurts, “Tony was in space and he was dying so he left you a message.” It is said so quickly that he barely hears; when it finally registers, he feels so light-headed he has to sit down.

“H-he left a message for _me_?” Steve can’t believe it. He had tried to kill the man, almost did, and he left his dying words to Steve?

“It was directly addressed to you, yes.” And now she sounds curt again. What she’d said...had Tony really—

It would be rude to ask. But he has to know, he has to know.

“Miss Potts, you said Tony was dying—is he, is he—“

She’s lost all semblance of composure when she replies, in that completely broken tone he’d heard hinted at earlier, “Tony, he-he didn’t m-make it, Steve. He’s gone.”

And now Steve can feel himself spiraling out of control, too. Because this can’t be happening. Not before he’s told Tony that—well, not only that he’s sorry but that he—

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Steve doesn’t know what to do. He feels like he is floating, looking at himself from a distance. He feels detached from his senses.

Steve Rogers is nothing without Tony Stark. He is lost, adrift, meaningless, a man out of time once more.

And so it is with an empty, listless tone that he says, “Thanks for letting me know, Miss Potts. How can I access this message?”

She sounds as defeated as he feels. The two of them, broken over one man that they both—(God, Steve still can’t admit it to himself. He can’t even say it in his head). “It’s a holographic message, he filmed it with the Mark 42 helmet. You’ll have to come to the Tower.”

This is it.

...

The next morning, he gets out of bed as if in a trance. Because his head might know what’s happened, but he can’t convince himself it’s true, can’t wrap his heart around the fact that Tony—

Tony, with his rare true smiles and his addiction to black coffee and his ever-present grease stains and his ‘throw caution to the wind’ attitude and his tendency to never think things through and his witty jokes and his not-so-funny jokes and his bad days that he tried his best to hide, Tony with his sparking laughter so different from the chuckles he gives the press, his little inventions as well as his big ones, his vulnerabilities that he had tried valiantly to hide—

Tony, who had opened up to the team, finally, and then been betrayed by Steve and then nearly murdered by him, Tony who was Steve’s first (future) friend, his closest friend, his rival, his partner in battle, at least—

Tony, who Steve (come on, Steve, you can think it) _loves_ , he is...gone.

A man who burns (burned, oh fuck, the past tense) so bright, extinguished, just like that.

And there went all of Steve’s chances to atone, to get rid of some of his crushing regret. Well, that had been selfish anyway, because Steve deserves it.

He deserves all of it: the regret, the shame, the remorse, the emptiness. Because he fell in love with his best friend, then betrayed him.

And now Tony Stark is dead, and Steve’s finger is hovering over the button to begin the message, and his breath is catching in his throat like he’s twelve and asthmatic again. These right here are Tony’s last words. Every moment Steve doesn’t press the button, Tony’s still alive, because Steve hasn’t heard those words yet.

He can’t delay it any longer. He deserves this pain. It’s his fault that Tony’s gone. It should have been Steve.

Steve looks at the button, this little bit of metal reflecting the bitterly bright white light back at him, glaring like it knows that it holds Steve’s fate in the balance of a breath. This is it.

He presses the button.

The projector buzzes quietly for a second, two, three—then it powers on, projecting soft blue light onto the wall and floor in front of him.

And there’s Tony, and Steve’s heart swoops like it always does, except this Tony looks like he’s resigned to his fate. The Tony that Steve knew would never stop fighting; but then again, Steve himself had seen the light go out of Tony’s eyes when Steve had buried his shield in his chest. Steve had caused that light to go out, the blazing inferno of a light that was Tony Stark.

“Steve. I- I, dammit, I knew I should’ve planned this first.”

And it sounds so much like Tony, who Steve hasn’t seen in years (years without Tony, living a half-life without him, and now he is cursed to one forever), that Steve feels his knees give out.

Because Steve is never going to hear Tony’s voice again, laugh with him, tease him, argue with him. This is it.

This is all that remains of Tony Stark.

Still, Tony continues. Steve watches, almost trance-like, unable to tear his eyes away from him. The emotions swelling within him are too much. Because Tony tells him that he’s a good man and not a perfect soldier—and this is him apologizing for what he’d said that day ( _everything special about you came out of a bottle!_ ), this is him saying that it isn’t true.

Here is Tony before him, asking for forgiveness in his own way. And Steve keeps watching with growing horror as he realizes what’s going on.

He watches as Tony recounts how Steve betrayed him, left him behind, chose Bucky when he could’ve chosen both; how Steve had almost killed Tony, almost did, almost killed the love of his life (and look what good that did, he’s never going to see Tony again, now, because of what he’s done. He deserves this, but Tony doesn’t, no matter what he says).

He listens as Tony wonders whether telling Steve would’ve changed anything, as Tony calls himself a coward for doing this when really he’s the bravest man Steve’s ever seen—Afghanistan, and the wormhole, and going into space to try to stop Thanos, and _this message_. Because for all these years, Steve and Tony had lived together, fought together, fought against each other, and Steve, too, had been too afraid of losing what they had to say a word.

This is it: Tony, dying, and telling Steve he loves him. This is courage Steve could never find. Even in his final hours Tony shone brighter than any star, Tony was beautiful even with his sunken eyes, his frail limbs. Tony was—

This message has to have been from at least a month ago, with how far Tony had likely gone on that ship. So Tony is somewhere up in that unforgiving, grey, somber sky above a world that Steve is powerless to fix, to save, no matter what Tony said.

Somewhere, Tony is drifting among the stars, dreaming and wishing and gone. Forever.

_If you’d told me, Tony, couldn’t we have avoided this? We could have loved and lost and saved the world together._

_If I’d told you, Tony, before the world crumbled around us, could we have been happy together? Do we deserve this pain if we could have saved the world by putting aside our own fears?_

_This isn’t your fault, Tony. It’s ours. How the mighty have fallen._

_I love you, too, Tony._

And Steve hasn’t cried since they first took him out of the ice, not even when he’d gotten Bucky back, not even when the Snap had ripped everyone (Sam, Wanda, T’Challa—) away from him—but he lets himself cry, now, for all the things he’s lost, for all the apologies he could never make, for all the things he’ll never get the chance to say.

There are no second chances for people like Steve. There are no might-have-beens. This is it.

The holographic projector makes a faint buzzing noise as it powers down. Part of Steve withers at that small, little sound. It’s too much of an ending, and Steve can’t bear it anymore. 

He has no purpose. No, he has one purpose—fix what he’s done. He has always been an Avenger at heart, so he will do what he does best. He will fight for what he believes in, and he will avenge what he’s lost, what they all have lost.

He will fight for Tony, who he loves (he’ll never stop, screw the past tense), and who loved him back.

Even so, Steve feels each and every star winking out in his once-glittering sky. He wishes—more than he’s ever wished for anything—for Tony.

Steve knows that Tony had drifted away wishing for him, too, just as fiercely.

But neither of them will ever get their wish, because this is it.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you all enjoyed, please don't hesitate to comment with any feedback or suggestions.
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> E
> 
>  
> 
> **WARNING: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH (Tony Stark)**


End file.
